4 ms·
Never mind YouTubers. I regularly see undisclosed advertisements on national broadcast television shows, like Good Morning America, to name a particularly egre
by logfromblammo 10y ago
Never mind YouTubers. I regularly see undisclosed advertisements on national broadcast television shows, like Good Morning America, to name a particularly egregious obfuscating advertiser. It is completely obvious to me when something is a (likely paid, somehow) promotional advertising rather than informational reporting.
It is obvious to me when ABC constantly promotes content owned by its parent company, Disney. But I often have to say to my spouse, "You know that's an ad, right?" and hear the response, "Whaaaaaat? No way, really? Now that you mention it..."
There is still a cohort of journalists hanging on to their last shred of professional ethics that will always disclose both paid consideration and corporate relationships between the subject of a story and their employer, but they seem to be slowly dying out.
YouTubers are the least of our problems. Native advertising is already firmly entrenched in mass media.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoIsn't any product featured on that show basically a paid advertisement? My wife would occasionally watch it, and I recall seeing them show off clothing all the time (complete with models parading in front of the camera.)
- modfodder 10y agoIf the segment includes a fashion editor/advisor from a magazine, the clothing and accessories featured are advertisers for the magazine, not paying GMA directly (to my knowledge). I did a little freelance on the magazine side, putting packages together to show the fashion labels what coverage the magazine was able to get. I have know idea if this cost extra or it was more of a incentive to purchase bigger ad buys in the magazine. This was nearly a decade ago, but at the time I don't believe the morning shows were paying labels or the fashion consultants, it was more of a quid pro quo.
- logfromblammo 10y agoObfuscation of the mutual back-scratching arrangements does not obviate the fact that the segment airing on national broadcast television is not being disclosed as an advertisement, nor that many viewers will not necessarily recognize it as such without outside assistance. It is really very well done if you consider it objectively. The show that is itself loaded with inlined advertisement is also able to sell traditional advertisement time in its segment breaks. But in my own opinion, shows that do that sort of thing need to be nuked from orbit, and the glass broken up with jackhammers so that salt may be plowed into the dust underneath. I simply cannot abide the ubiquity and intrusiveness of advertisements in the current culture.
- smokeyj 10y agoNews companies have tools to help schedule advertisements in ways that don't make the advertiser look bad (airing a segment on oil spills then don't advertise BP). While advertisers don't explicitly ask media companies not to run negative segments, they can book a large commercial inventory and incentivize as much.
- modfodder 10y agoOh I agree and didn't mean to infer otherwise, just doing my bit to illuminate the process (a process that might have changed since I was last involved a decade ago).